Orange Pill U: Hazing Your Classmates with Bitcoin | Bitcoin 2026

Good morning everyone. How we feeling? >> So, my name is Madison Hansen. I'm going to be the host for today's panel. I just wanted to start out by saying last year this was my very first Bitcoin conference ever and I was just a volunteer and now a year later I'm up here on stage. So, I just wanted to start with a moment of gratitude. Thank you to the Bitcoin community for being so open and so welcoming to me, but also to all of the Gen Zers up here. And I'm especially excited because we have an incredible group of Gen Z voices. We got Nikki, host of the Orangefield podcast, Braden, who focuses on partnerships, affiliates, and growth within the Bitcoin conference, and Holston, who works in capital markets at Bitcoin Well, really at the intersection of traditional finance and Bitcoin. So to kick things off, I'd love to start with each of you just sharing how you first got into Bitcoin at such a young age. >> Yeah. Um I guess I'll kick things off. So I didn't get into Bitcoin until about 20 25 August. That's when I started my podcast. And I started it after my parents who were big big time Bitcoiners. like they were just consistently consistently like hounding me at every single dinner table conversation being like, "Nikki, you need to start caring about Bitcoin. Nikki, you need to pay attention to what Bitcoin actually is and maybe learn from it." So then decided to finally give them a chance. Looked at some videos, watched some podcasts, read some books. Bitcoin Standard, I'm sure you guys know, great book. It's the book that Orangefilled me. And from there, just been full force in into Bitcoin. So pretty cool. Oh yeah, that's awesome. >> Yeah. Yeah, I'll go. But basically my journey was it was about 2022 around right after co times. I was getting into college and you know as a I was I had a lot of money at institution no Bitcoin and I realized I was like you know I had a buddy from high school that was like hey you should look into Bitcoin. And I was like what is Bitcoin? What is this? And then I looked into it and realized what it can do for not just a Gen Z but for people that are older and younger like us. And then that was my journey. And then ever since then I uh you know I work for BTC Inc. You know I'm very blessed I work for them and I get so many opportunities to meet people that are early adopters and people you know that got into Bitcoin in 2025. >> Yeah. I mean I started buying Bitcoin a little bit later than you. 2023. Um, I was in my third year of college and I was just like really struggling, really feeling the brokenness of the financial system. I was working three jobs and a professor recommended the book broken money. Um, and that was the first time I felt like my feelings were very validated and I wasn't going crazy and I realized something was incredibly broken. And so I read the book and then just started watching all the videos, went down the Sailor rabbit hole. Um, and then yeah, just kind of got Orangeville that way and then started working in space about 9 months ago now. And yeah, it's been an incredible journey. That's really awesome. Thank you for sharing. So I want to move with you Holl starting first. Bitcoin was born as a rejection of traditional finance, but now you're adi wants in. So how do you think about that ideological tension in your work? Yeah, I mean I think there's definitely some tension there. I mean, Bitcoin was created in direct response to the 2008 financial crisis, specifically the bank bailouts. I mean, you look at the Genesis block and a news headline is literally embedded into it, right? And so, Satoshi was not subtle at all as to why he created Bitcoin. Um, I mean, I think what I hold on to in my work is really the distinction between the tool and the institution. um like the just because institutions are adopting Bitcoin doesn't mean that uh tra that Bitcoin is becoming traded to which is to provide a neutral incorruptible alternative to the corrupt alternative. Um and so yeah, I don't think that Wall Street buying Bitcoin is an issue or a risk. I think the real risk exists in education in, you know, the mass majority thinking that they hold Bitcoin just because they have a Bitcoin ETF. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I think that some Bitcoin maxis, they can be a little pushy with the Bitcoin and that can make trify people uninterested, but really if we work together, I think that's what's going to help mass adoption. Absolutely. So, Brandon, I want to move to you. What was the moment you actually believed in Bitcoin? Not just as a career move but as money. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's a wonderful question. I feel like when I believed in Bitcoin was, you know, trying to get back on my uh petty story of, you know, with my buddies, you know, kind of orange pilling me. But I feel like when I finally believed in Bitcoin is when I looked at the money that I have in institutions and I realized, you know, within adoption and how much money I'm making back, I realized that I'm making way more than I'm making with an institution wise. So you know then also as a career aspect you know I work on the growth marketing team within Bitcoin conference but you know when I realize as a career move you know we are all early adopters in some type of occasion I think that's what people don't realize is that you know when you have people at Wales you know someone that's or early adopter you know we're all early adopters if we own Bitcoin at this point I feel like and that's when I believed in it and I believed in. You know, I feel like right now it's kind of half price with Bitcoin and that's why I love, you know, keep buying more. >> That's great. I I've heard the quote buy one get one free. That's what Bitcoin's at right now. So, that's great. Um, now I want to hear from all of you on this one. How do you respond to your peers when they say they are too late to get into Bitcoin? So, I think I mean, we all know this, right? But it's never too late to get into Bitcoin. Like look at us right now. We're like 20some years old. That is so incredibly early. And it's the same thing I tell like any one of my friends who's like, "But it's at what's like some 70s something. 75K today. 75K today. It's at 75K. I completely miss the boat. Why don't I go look at XRP or Salana instead because that's like the next best thing?" which that's a whole another conversation, but it's never too early to start kind of getting into hard money, getting into securing your financial future, especially not if you're like 20 years old. That's probably the best time that you could like start thinking about your future self. So, that's what I would say. Uh, absolutely. >> Yeah. For me, I feel like, you know, when someone says, "Oh, I'm too late." I think that's a BS in occasion because I think, you know, when you look at what Bitcoin can do and what it's been doing for people, you know, I think, you know, I talk to family members all the time like, you know, anytime I go back to Ohio where I'm from and for Thanksgiving and Christmas and they always ask me, "Why are you buying Bitcoin? Why do you work for a Bitcoin company?" I'm like, "It's cuz I know what it can do." And then I have uncles and I have older relatives that are like, "So, am I good to buy right now?" And I'm like, "Yeah, no." Like right now, kind of like you mentioned, it's half price. Like half price. I love half price stuff. I feel like any Bitcoiners love uh half price stuff. But no, with the occasion with like people that say they are too late or I I'm I'm going to wait off. Buy now. Buy now. And you uh you'll not regret it, I would say. >> Yeah. I mean, I think similar sentiment to you. I always say like late relative to what your 4% savings in Chase like just look at the look at the 5-year chart, right? Just zoom out a little bit. Look at what Bitcoin's done in the past. Average K of 30%. Like tell me another asset that's you know doing that. My favorite chart I love showing people this chart is the uh price of homes in Bitcoin and it just astronomically goes down and your life gets so much cheaper every year. And so yeah, I think people are always going to hate and say that they're late, but they're going to be sitting on the sidelines when Bitcoin's at a million. So I with you. >> Welcome to Predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Get a 100% cash back up to $100 on your first predict bet if it loses. predict where everything is a market. Yeah, definitely. And I heard someone tell me last night, you know, imagine when Bitcoin's at 10 million and you could have bought it for $70,000. >> Like just that thought alone, I don't understand how you can't see through it. That's great. So now let's move on to Nikki. You're building Orange Peel, the Orange Peel podcast, as a Gen Z transition layer. What's one piece of your content that's changed someone's mind and why do you think it landed? This is a good question. Um, I think so. This was maybe October last year. I made a video just breaking down the concept of DCA because I think one of the biggest barriers that comes with being young and convincing our friends to start caring about Bitcoin is again the price point that it's at. Like 75K is not accessible to someone who's in college who's merely just trying to like make a living essentially and just kind of scrape by with what they can. So, that video broke down the concept of DCA and just explained that even $10 a day really can make a difference. And it just comes down to maybe replacing like your daily Starbucks, which isn't that big of an ask, right? Copy something that can be made at home. And $10 a day compounds. That keeps going. Imagine where you could be in 10, 20, 25 years. So, that's something that really did land with my friends. And I think that anyone who might be listening to this and really is trying to talk to Gen Z and get them to start caring about Bitcoin, it's really just painting it as something that's accessible and something that can in fact be for you no matter where you are financially. Absolutely. And I think to add to that, a reason that people don't really understand is a lot of people don't understand finance. They don't understand money. So our age, unless you went to school to study finance or you took the time to read the books to understand the Federal Reserve, you just don't know. So you don't even know what DCA means. You don't really even know where the US dollar came from. So we can't push those people out. We just need to bring them in and educate them and that's how we can teach them about Bitcoin. That's amazing. So I want to hear from all of you on this one. How do you all fill your generation? what has worked and what hasn't? I can start with this one. Um, I think what has worked is just kind of uh helping people see the like financial landscape we're even in cuz I think so many people complain about the price of gas going up or groceries going up or rent going up, etc., but they just they stop there. They don't really do any more digging. They don't do any research as to why we're seeing this. Um, and so I think just validating those like feelings and uh all of that through books like broken money or even just showing them like charts and stuff. Um, because I think people really struggle to see a solution if they don't understand the problem in the first place, right? And so I think what's worked is like, you know, avoid saying things like have fun staying poor or not going to make it. I hate those like sayings in the Bitcoin community. I think that needs to stop. Um, but I think also just kind of meeting people where they're at. And so whether that's through short form content like Nikki, I know you do a lot of short form content um or hopping onto trends um and just kind of yeah helping people understand with analogies I've seen be super successful. >> Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. Like back on the Bitcoin maxis like trust me I'm all in on Bitcoin but if you are saying these things it's not going to bring people into Bitcoin. If you say have fun staying poor, they're just going to continue to stay poor because they don't think there's a way out for them because they think they missed it. That's a really good point. Yeah. >> Yeah. Also, you know, I I kind of made a mistake when I first started educating people with Bitcoin. You know, I was kind of more I would say aggressive extent like y'all were talking about where, you know, I would use certain key words that would kind of be like, oh, stay poor. I realized when you know educating people within Gen Z wise I feel like you know uh where I'm still in university and I've you know talked to so many people and one thing I've mentioned to them and where I feel like I haven't made a mistake is you know I tell no one to buy Bitcoin. I want them to be educated what it is. And also within a fiat currency, you know, I like them to look at, you know, a fiat currency compared to what Bitcoin can do. And then if you look at charts, when you look at charts, when you look at, you know, podcast, you know, X spaces and you actually educated on the point of what Bitcoin is, I feel like that's when you finally realize, you know, what it can do, not only for a short term, but for also long term. You know, I know you mentioned it could perhaps maybe hit a million one day. I hope and I believe in all my faith. I feel like >> that's great. I think kind of piggybacking off of what's already been said here. For me, the biggest barrier to cross has been the fact that my friends just do not care about saving or investing at all. They're quite literally get the paycheck, go spend it all on the things they want to do, and then get the next paycheck. And that in itself has been such a huge problem because how do you convince someone that they need to start saving for their future? How do you convince someone that investing is actually important? And from there you go to Bitcoin. So you really like I found that you do have to start with fundamentals with most Gen Z. Um again I'm like a 20-year-old girl. My friends are 20-year-old girls. We've got major shopping addictions. Major like same exactly right. like you get it. It's it's really it comes down to the fundamentals, I think, which I see. You have to start talking about why it's important to actually have good money habits and from there paint Bitcoin as the one and only hard money, the one and only thing that's going to protect your time and your energy. Absolutely. And I saw on your page you said build with AI and protect with Bitcoin. I think that is a fantabulous slogan. That is so cool. And I think with AI, with Bitcoin, with this, you know, energy, you know, era that we're entering, I think it's really important to merge those together. So, I like what you're doing with that. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Of course. Um, so I kind of wanted to move more to the university landscape. This year, I was able to take a 6 week blockchain course at my university, Florida GF Coast University, and it was really amazing. I was probably the only person who actually cared about the class. everybody else was just taking it for a free elective. But I wanted to ask you all if you've ever been able to take a Bitcoin related class and how long do you think it'll be before Bitcoin is taught at universities, you know, worldwide? So, I have not been able to take a Bitcoin class. I go to the University of Melbourne out in Australia and I think still there's a lot of what's the word like bias against Bitcoin and there's a lot of stigma that's the word I'm looking for around that. So I think it's going to take a few years. I want to say maybe I I hope to see it in the next 10 years but I I really don't have much hope for my university unfortunately. That's all right. It's not going to, you know, be fast, right? It starts slow and then suddenly. So, we need a few universities to kind of bring it in before we really see it in places like that. >> Yeah. For me, you know, I'll talk about my university. I go to a small university in Nashville, Tennessee. And I want to say one thing I'm very blessed about is actually a couple of my co-workers actually go to the university or graduated. But as a class-wise, we have no classes that talk about blockchain, Bitcoin at all. But, you know, when we had a conference in Nashville a couple years ago, we um the Bitcoin conference prior for me working uh for them, we actually hosted a couple uh panels and events within uh the business uh university and I'm very blessed. I actually got to go to a couple and that's actually another reason why I'm working here is I got those connections within um Bitcoin conference and you know talking to them and I feel like the connection within Bitcoin and also within I feel like university I think in the next 5 years I'm hoping that big universities like Ohio State um like Miami perhaps would you know get some type of class cuz I feel like you know with Gen Z's like us I feel like you I'm not trying to insult this, but I feel like a lot of us, maybe not us on stage, they're not good at saving. Uh I feel like in the extent of they like you mentioned uh shopping habits, I have so many of my buddies that just they go ahead and they get a paycheck and they don't save any and I kind of have this different mindset. I like to look at long term. But going back on like university wise, I hope that in the next 5 years that uh every university will have some type of blockchain um class or some type of you know curricular activity that you can learn more about blockchain and bitcoin. >> Yeah, I did not get to take any Bitcoin classes. Um but I I don't know. I'll play devil's advocate here. I actually don't think that we're going to see, you know, a lot of Bitcoin courses in the near future. I think at my alma m um we've already seen like the one Bitcoin class that was super popular just got shut down. And so I think in my mind that makes perfect sense because these universities were built with uh you know like the whole point of them was to create compliant little employees to go work in whatever industry for the next 30 40 years. And so Bitcoin really um inspires people to think more critically about money and about just the entire system. And so I don't think that aligns with their objective. And so yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm just a little bit more pessimistic, but I don't think we're going to see too many more Bitcoin clutches. Maybe we'll see more blockchain and like broader crypto, but Bitcoin specific and like Austrian economics, I just don't think that aligns with the narrative. I I agree with you, Hollston. I'm optimistic. Of course, I want to see it, but I don't know if FGCU is going to teach Bitcoin until I start the Hansen School of Bitcoin. So I think it's going to be people like us founders who go in there and start it back at all our alma modders. Um so I wanted to move on. I know everybody here on the stage has had the opportunity to connect with some industry leaders, talk to so many different people, whether in interviews, podcasts, working with the conference. So, what's like the best piece of advice that you've ever received from one of those conversations and how do you think that could be applied to getting Gen Z more into Bitcoin? >> I I can start this one off. I don't know if Mark Moss is in here, but Mark Moss is someone I really um admire, and he told me this last year. We were in uh Puppy in in New York last year, and he was like, "Your generation, you're so soft. You're like, you guys just need to tough it up a little it like yes it's hard but you have two options you can either sit in that and just complain and live a high time preference lifestyle or you can buy Bitcoin learn skills use AI to make money and you know really just benefit off of this you know next wave of AI and just yeah I think there's just unlimited upside here and so I think my biggest piece of advice would be that you know what he told me is just like don't be pessimistic you only have two options and so yeah maybe older generations did have it easier with real estate and all that and the boomers got houses for berries and chickens, right? But like for us, like we we're the first generation to have AI and Bitcoin together. Like I love your bio, Nikki. Like that's so great. And so I think that's yeah, probably my biggest piece of advice. >> That's amazing. I I think mine also kind of relates to what Austin was saying with AI and Bitcoin. This was earlier this year. I recorded an episode with British Hodddle and he kind of had the same thing to say to me because his entire premise for his channel is get to one Bitcoin, right? So my first question to him was like, hey, I'm 20 years old. How do I get to one Bitcoin? Like realistically, which how much money I'm like able to set aside every week? Is this something that I can see for myself in the near future? And all he had to say to me was that it's never been easier than now to create and to monetize your education. and monetize your passions with with AI obviously as a builder and with Bitcoin to actually protect what time and energy you're putting into making some money. It's It's never been easier. And to me, that was just super inspiring cuz it was like I'm really passionate about what I'm doing, but can I be doing more? And I think that's something that everyone needs to be thinking about. >> Yeah, I'm I'm not going to lie. I'm going to kind of hop on the train with AI. I feel like the best piece of advice I've gotten in the uh industry is first of all very blessed to be in the industry and they sake of I get to talk to people on a daily basis that you know early adopters just adopted Bitcoin but I feel like being at a a company that talks about Bitcoin is all about Bitcoin is the biggest advice I got is kind of with AI is you know every day you know I I was using AI when I first started college freshman year and now I'm about to gradu graduate, but you know, adopting AI and also looking at strategies within, you know, AI and Bitcoin and all about it can give you so much advice. I feel like >> that's amazing. So, we have just a few minutes left here. I wanted to kind of get an ending takeaway from each of you. What is something that you want to, you know, make sure Jenzie understands? like one thing that you feel like will make them understand Bitcoin and kind of feel more comfortable about learning about it. Hopefully, we have some Gen Z people back home watching this video next week. And what's something that you want to leave them with that will inspire them to research themselves? >> Yeah, I would love to start. You know, if I could say anybody that don't even know Bitcoin or they have looked into Bitcoin is everyone's been bored in life. Take three minutes out of their day. not even three minutes. It could be two minutes. So, look up what Bitcoin can do and also what it can do in the future. Look at charts like she was talking about earlier and take those three minutes to actually get educated because when you're educated on everything, I'm not telling people to buy Bitcoin. I'm telling them educated because when you're educated on topics and in what Bitcoin can do, I feel like you're definitely going to buy it. >> Yeah. I think similar to Braden, I'd recommend people I'm not even going to tell you to go study Bitcoin. Study money, study monetary history, monetary mechanics, and then Bitcoin will make a lot more sense. >> Absolutely. While you're doing those two things, study AI, too. Like build with AI, protect with Bitcoin as I will always always preach and always say you need to understand the power of deflation and why Bitcoin is going to be so so important as we move into this economy that's going to be run by AI. So that that's would be my biggest takeaway to anyone that's watching this. Absolutely. So study money. Figure out what money really is. Learn that system before you learn Bitcoin. Study AI because they will go together. I think that if you're going to watch this back at home and you're Gen Z, I really hope you take the time. Um there's lots of resources out there for you to learn about it. If you don't know, um just remember you are still so early. You're never too late to Bitcoin. So, as we close off, can everyone just, you know, tell the crowd where they can find you on social media and maybe where else they can find you online? >> Yeah. So, I'm on X, Instagram, Tik Tok, Orange Pale Pod. And then I have a YouTube channel also called Orange Pale Pod. So, you can find me there. And I hope to see some of you guys. >> Holston Valencia on X and Instagram. Yeah, those two. Yeah, you can find me on uh Braden Rutic on all socials or on X bases on the Bitcoin conference >> and you can find me at Hansen Hash on X or the Hansen Hash podcast on all platforms. Um I think that's the end of our panel. Thank you so much to everybody who took the time to listen to us. We're just a bunch of Jenzers who want to take control of the future with Bitcoin. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Every year this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money center stage. So, where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville, July 2027.